Butternut squash... Or triffid?!?

[Oddsocksrus]

As part of our quest to grow more home grown food this year we planted a few butter nut squash seeds. We kept two plants and they are now covering an area about 10m2.....
They have produced lots of flowers all summer and are now finally setting some fruits.. About 40 small squashes

So what did we do wrong. Should we have trimmed them to just one or two fruiting stems, should we have cut growth back to encourage setting of fruits sooner and what do we do now?
Should we cut back leaves and stems selecting the best squashes to grow on? Now the weather has changed they aren't growing well enough for many of these to fill to an eating size!

[Fishandjam]

Did you plant saved seeds from a squash you'd eaten (from the supermarket)? Or were they packet seeds?

[GoingGoingGoth]

Will watch this eagerly, we planted a squash (from supermarket squash seed), kept it to a reasonable size, and got lots of flowers but no fruits.

It was in a big pot on the windowsill, so wasn't expecting much did look pretty

[Fishandjam]

I think I'm right in saying that the majority of butternuts sold in supermarkets are grown in warm countries. We need cold-tolerant varieties for this country, as otherwise we don't have a long enough growing season. Hence packet seeds being a better bet! They're also extremely big, greedy plants, like all the squash family. At least a square metre of space and a bucket of manure per plant! Which might explain why yours didn't do much, goth (love the nn BTW!)

And we had such a cold spring that lots of veg didn't get going very well this year.

[GoingGoingGoth]

Thanks Fish that makes sense, we did really well when we had an allotment (and bought seeds)

[Fishandjam]

Oops, sorry if I came across as lecturing - if you had an allotment you already know all the manure stuff! My baby pumpkin plants were monstered by slugs this year, so I had no luck either...

[GoingGoingGoth]

Fish not at all

[Oddsocksrus]

I just discovered that someone replied. Thank you!
I bought the seeds, though we did plant some from a supermarket squash too and they didn't do anything.
We do now have about 50 small ones, some as big as a pear and four proper sized ones turning the right colour too, it's very exciting!